Fingerprinting of multimedia content, e.g., video content, has been one way for determining if the content has been stolen and uploaded to a site that permits downloading of the content without any fees imposed by the content owner. Other methods of content identification have been employed in the past including watermarking or digital signatures.
Video fingerprinting however does not rely on digital data being added to the content. A video fingerprint cannot algorithmically be “removed” because it is was never “added” to the content. In addition, a reference video fingerprint may be created at any point from any copy of the video. Video fingerprinting is not a computer intense process and may be performed by relatively low powered micro processors.